Godard has a field day in A Woman is a Woman. What better genre to employ Godard’s influence of Brechtian theory than a musical! The sheer rhythm of the movie is enough to give it the instant classic status and the quirky humor just adds to the effect. More than being a novel attempt, the film seems like a celebration of the New Wave with references and homage to the biggies of the 50’s. And the wild child he is, Godard doesn’t miss out on opportunities to glorify himself too! (Émile says at one point, “I don’t know if this is a comedy or a tragedy, but it’s a masterpiece“)

A Woman Is A Woman (1961)

The film flows like a dew drop on a leaf with each moment topping the previous. “Expect the unexpected” would make a great tagline for the film as Godard intentionally disorients us from any predictions. And the effect works for sure. We see Angela tossing up an omelet and gathering it after a small talk. She enters a magic chamber and gets her costume changed like that. Godard seems to elicit the craziness, or rather the magic of the medium employing such moments that not only break movie traditions as we know them but also add to the radiance of the film. Godard uses blue and red colours aptly but is nowhere close to what he would do with them in his later films.

Godard, at times, interrupts key conversations with sounds and at others, interrupts sound with conversations. So, one doesn’t follow the story line closely which is precisely what Godard wants. As a result, you can’t help but enjoy the individual and “present” moments of the film for what they are rather than connecting their relevance with the past or analyzing the direction towards the future. Anna Karina at her charming best and one can see why Godard was so smitten. It is a treat watching her dance and a restrained Belmondo accompanying her.

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6 Responses to “For Ever Godard #3”

1) Godard, at times, interrupts key conversations with sounds and at others, interrupts sound with conversations.

2) Godard has a field day in A Woman is a Woman. What better genre to employ Godard’s influence of Brechtian theory than a musical!

The picture of Karina and Claude Brialy on your blog is the first evidence of breaking the fourth wall. Godard has always used his Brechtian ideology through his 60s oeuvre in a very tongue and cheek manner. A number of times the dialogues, voice-over or actions are self-reflexive and never manages to distance the viewer completely (critical manner) only later, I think, it has become more dense and layered.

If Le Petit Soldat was Godard’s love letter to Karina, A woman is a woman is the poem. Godard, transposed a lot from his own personal life into this film- his third ‘attempt’ of re-working on a genre. This has remained a motif throughout his oeuvre. His ‘attempts’ to look or revisit something and in this case a musical comedy.

There is a development in his mise-en-scene from this point on; a shift, from action painter to becoming a little more classicist, in pure Godardian terms. The film gave him a new canvas to paint or explore- ‘Cinemascope’ and ‘Color’. This also brought in a new challenge that, to shoot with direct sound. So, unlike, that of Breathless or Le Petit Soldat Godard had to work harder on giving his notes of dialogues; so that the actors could recite them. He could no longer call out the dialogues as the film was being shot. Godard also had to face the challenge of shooting on stage and he meticulously re-created an apartment that he had earlier chosen for shooting.

If the images, the characters and the nature to inform and not impose of this movie gave its vitality and belief that it would be success. But it was Godard’s key innovation in the sound department that completely killed things-off, although, the sound in the film had not crystallized into a complete different hemisphere like his later works, where there is a contradiction, conflict, chaos that sound brings to the image, but also creating some real sublime moments. A montage that usually moves laterally. Unlike most musical’s the character did not ‘sing’ but like I mentioned above made an ‘attempt’ of doing so through his key insertion of everyday objects. So when Godard consistently followed a shot with direct sound, by a shot with dubbed music, he did put in his first ideas of dissociation of images, but hereof- it killed the film. Francios Truffaut reflects on the sound in this film, and the reason for general failure:

If one plays with sound and image in a two- unconventional way, people yell, it’s an automatic reaction. They ripped up the seats in Nice because they thought that the equipment booth was bad. Of course, one can teach people in articles explaining to them what it’s all about but, in the theatres where it was shown, the people were surprised. Godard went too far with the sound mix. When the girl comes out of the café, suddenly no more sound, there’s silence. No problem: people think that the projector is broken…People expected to see a nice, classical story. A girl, tow boys a neighborhood in Paris…the very story one expects to be told classically. They were flabbergasted.

Godard through this film did talk about the love, problems and his own principle of how he sees his woman or want her to be. The break down finally does happen in the apartment in Contempt that Godard has build in his works. Where the ‘ home’ in different shapes, sizes costumes through the 60s allowed him to explore various aspects of social culture: personal or impersonal every element much like this movie not only spoke for Godard but, I believe, speaks for each one of us.

Godard also made a phonograph to promote this film, the transcribed is printed in his book of criticism Godard on Godard here’s a brief passage:

Anna: Lights! Camera! Action!

Godard: Two Blue eyes: Giraduouz. A red umbrella: Aragon. This is Angele

Music: Music theme…

Godard: The invention of cinema is based on a gigantic eror:that of, recording the image of a man, and reproducing it by projecting it till the end of time. In other words, believing that a strip of celluloid is less perishable than a block of stone or even memory. This strange belief mean that, from Griffith to Bresson, the history of the cinema and the history of its errors are one: the eror of trying to pain ideas better than music, to illustrate actions better than novel, to describe feeling better than painting.

An interesting anecdote form Brody’s book on Godard:

The shoot was stormy: on one occasion, Karina ran off the set and Godard ran after her. Brialy reported that the actress “began to assail our dear Godard with crude words. He described their tormented union throughout the shoot: “They tore each other apart, argues, loved each other, and hated each other”. Godard was nonetheless especially solicitous of Karina on the set, and Brialy and Belomondo resented his exclusive attention to his lead actress, criticizing him for not even acknowledging them when he arrived on the set. The next day, Godard sarcastically greeted the actors with two bouquets of flowers.

“This strange belief mean that, from Griffith to Bresson, the history of the cinema and the history of its errors are one: the eror of trying to pain ideas better than music, to illustrate actions better than novel, to describe feeling better than painting.” – Does it mean Godard wanted a medium that didn’t tell stories and events, one that didn’t need themes and ideas and one that needn’t be emotionally expressive at all?

Brice Parain, In Vivre Sa Vie, says that error is necessary for the discovery of truth.

One could consider Godard’s quotes in most count arbitrary or paradoxical. But this is what I think regarding the above. His quotes and out lines his ideas of analogical thinking or binary disposition. Godard does not say he did not want any one of them; rather, he wanted them to represent ideas in the mannerism that could be called ‘cinematic’. Hence he later adds…

“ The error akin to eve in Garden of Eden becomes fascinating in a thriller, arresting in a Western, blinding a war film and alluring in what is normally called a musical’

That’s why he connects the history of cinema and the history of errors to one. Because be it Griffith or Bresson both arrived at their own ideas of cinema through these errors to represent something else that owes no allegiance to the ontological values of cinema. But it’s finally through this ‘errors’ that finally a liberation and formation of truth had arrived- that of cinema.

[…] in any case it’s a masterpiece”, says one of the characters, self-referentially, in Godard’s A Woman is a Woman (1961). I’m tempted to say the same thing about Tarantino’s deceptively irreverent, endlessly […]